Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;478575Sure, but nothing I've said makes that impossible. In fact, if I'm going to be asked to depict an alien mindset, I want things worked out as consistently, clearly and logically as possible so that it's possible to use my reason and imagination to understand how those creatures think rather than just parroting the appropriate cliche or whatever. I also want to understand the meaning or function of the points of differentiation from ours, which contributes to a better understanding of the whole. "Why does this species think so differently?" had better have a good question if the whole thing is predicated on it.

Depends on your aim, I guess. For some people having all these things work out is absolutely necessary for them to get the setting. For others, they'll want to know everything they can about every possible NPC since where they were born, who were their parents, who did they lose their virginity to, and so on. I'm not kidding.

Take me for instance. I have something against settings that represent pantheons in ways that break my suspension of disbelief. Like if we're talking Forgotten Realms gods and the way its pantheons actually relate to one another, their relative creation myths (hints: there's a single one), societal myth (hinted that only when we're talking of racial groups or monsters), and so on so forth. I'm a guy who loves the gods of Glorantha. That's my standard of what feels right.

So I'm totally getting that you'd need that kind of detail to relate to an alien being like this.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;478575Similarly, "Why are we killing orcs, and why are the orcs trying to kill us?" are pretty important questions, especially in dungeoncrawls and hack-and-slash games. In fact, the more the game focuses on killing orcs, the better and more interesting answer(s) it ought to have to that question, rather than just handwaving it away as a tiresome problem.

In practice, there's almost always a rudimentary answer in the setup of the campaign itself: the orcs are pillaging and attacking caravans around town. The town itself is attacked by hordes of orcs. Orcs have been nesting in the mountains and are stealing children from the farmsteads. I've rarely, if ever, seen a game where there wasn't at least the start of a justification from the PCs point of view to go there and root the orcs (or monsters) out. Likewise for modules. Temple of Elemental Evil? Brigands attacking people on roads in the area -> Moathouse -> Temple. G1-3 idem. S4 idem. Etc.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;478575As I said near the start of the thread, answering these sorts of questions injects variety, meaning, context to encounters, adventures and campaigns when done well. Doing them well means handling them in a way that opens up new possibilities and developments, rather than closing them down. Rigid metaphysical constructions are necessarily more limiting than contingent reasons, and therefore should be used sparingly when at all, and then only for the most common recurring elements of the world.

I get that. But variety, meaning and context don't have to be focused on that particular aspect of the setting. You can focus that attention on Gods, plants, geography, history of your dungeon, the maps themselves, etc etc. It's not reasonable to look at this sole factor of a game world's design and automatically conclude that said design was "bad" or "lazy". I disagree.

Beno> It's less the specific area of focus and more the way that the focus is handled, whatever it happens to be.

I have a similar hate for cackling evil overlords who represent Satan (badly) for that matter, and for similar reasons. Morgoth is the only one of those I like, and that's because he's reminiscent of Milton's Satan, and is therefore necessarily not an irredeemable psychopath with magic powers.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;478581I have a similar hate for cackling evil overlords who represent Satan (badly) for that matter, and for similar reasons. Morgoth is the only one of those I like, and that's because he's reminiscent of Milton's Satan, and is therefore necessarily not an irredeemable psychopath with magic powers.

On villains I can go either way depending on the tone of the campaign. Sometimes I like an over-the-top, super evil bad guy, but other times I like my villains to have more depth. I say if you are going to make a cackling mastermind, might as well go all out and ham it up.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;478570I am doubtful about the whole concept of "evil races" except as artificial constructions by external forces in the first place, and then yes, I am willing to assert that a group of unrestrained psychopathic murderer-rapists would not form a self-sustaining society that could perpetuate itself.

So gnolls are or are not an evil race?  I'm getting confused.  Cause I'm pretty sure they raise live young to adulthood.

Quote from: MDBrantingham;478584So gnolls are or are not an evil race?  I'm getting confused.  Cause I'm pretty sure they raise live young to adulthood.

A recent study showed that 65% of Gnolls no longer have the "E" gene, so no, they aren't an evil species.


The whole notion of an "evil race" is conceptually problematic, and something I avoid whenever possible. In the setting of mine that has abundant Gnolls (the Dawnlands), they are violent, predatory pack hunters with a taste for the flesh of sentients, and mostly belong to cults that worships demons. That means that most Gnolls are pretty evil. Intrinsically? No. I see no reason to say that Gnolls are any more evil than the above reasons make them.

Quote from: Benoist;478567Nope. Steal a brain somewhere, that one's rotten. Then get yourself an education, acquire a mind of your own, pull out a copy of a dictionary to help you decipher the complicated fancy words, and then maybe you'll have a shot at this.

Oh, look, another internet pseudo-intellectual that thinks big words make them smart!

You are just so adorable!

edit: Just a hint for you, because you're so cute. Using big words when they're not appropriate doesn't make you seem smart; it makes you seem like an idiot who wants others to think him smart because he knows such big words oh man that's super impressive. Only among people with decent vocabularies it's really not impressive; it's needlessly pedantic. Woop-de-fucking-do. You know a fancier word than needs dictate. Guess what? No one cares.

Irredeemable evil is fine in my book, but it has to have a decent motivation.  The evil overlord executing his minions while twirling his moustache is yawn-inducing.

EDIT: Who is Darwinism and why is he trolling like it's illegal in Britain?

Quote from: Darwinism;478587it's needlessly pedantic.

What are you, the kind of guy that wants others to think him smart because he knows big words?

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;478586The whole notion of an "evil race" is conceptually problematic, and something I avoid whenever possible.

Fair enough.  But that's a personal choice on your part, because something about the concept of a race being intrinsically evil doesnt sit right with you.  Doesnt apply to someone else that doesnt have that problem.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;478555I don't know Black Tokyo so I can't comment on that one.

Imagine a setting/game book based on a white nerd's exposure to Tokyo through hentai and erotic doujin manga.

QuoteBut I barring a few extreme ends of the spectrum, no games don't reflect anything significant about the people playing them.

Somewhat agree, somewhat disagree -- it tends to get complicated with games.  I do have to say that thank God Koltar and Sett aren't in this thread, though.

Quote from: John Morrow;478531Neither.  If the Aztec priest is doing it out of pragmatic necessity and has qualms about killing the innocent, that would make him NEUTRAL according to the d20 3.5 SRD alignment system.  If he enjoys watching them squirm and gets a kick out of it, he's Evil.  A Good Aztec priest would offer himself up as a sacrifice before sacrificing another.

Fair enough.

QuotePersonally, I think a broad and healthy Neutral band between Good and Evil, that includes those motivated by pragmatism rather than altruism or cruelty, is critical to making the whole alignment system work.  Collapse everything to "Good or Evil" and it does quickly break down.  

Certainly.

Maybe the problem is that, for many players, Neutral seems to not be well enough defined to make it interesting, or it looks like a "I can do more or less what suits me better" card. IME, people tends to prefer more clearly defined guidelines to roleplay.

Quote from: Darwinism;478534Oh and the games people play very definitely reflect on who and what you are in real life. Or would you argue that the group that plays Black Tokyo is perfectly balanced in every regard?

Even if Black Tokyo sounds like a dreadful piece of shit of a game, no, it doesn't. I've met several perfectly adjusted persons who like manga and anime like Urotsukidoji or gore-splatter films, and shit like that. And they're perfectly healthy, because they can recognize that those are horrid things should they happen in real life.

QuoteI'm not comfortable at all in even pretending to be a genocidal maniac even if the game does tell me they totally deserve it for being born, and people who see nothing wrong with it worry me a bit. Not much, this is just pretend after all, but our characters are always reflections of ourselves in one way or another.

Our characters are reflections of ourselves in many things, but the propensity to engage in combat is probably not one. Your argument is self-defeating.

Also, if you think that D&D (or your typical FRPG, for that regard, as D&D's influence is huge) is about playing genocidal maniacs, that is the wrongest assumption ever.

Quote from: Peregrin;478594Imagine a setting/game book based on a white nerd's exposure to Tokyo through hentai and erotic doujin manga.

Shit.

QuoteSomewhat agree, somewhat disagree -- it tends to get complicated with games.  I do have to say that thank God Koltar and Sett aren't in this thread, though.

It should add the proper note of ignorance and messy unintelligible schizophrenic posts.

Quote from: John Morrow;478565The Nazis didn't have children, either, because evil people can't have and raise children.  They hatched as fully formed and uniformed adults from beer steins.

If one of my beer steins hatches into a fully formed hot female Nazi in uniform, I will join the Joy Division.  

I'd like to throw a conceptual monkey wrench from Orcs of Thar into this discussion.

One of the secrets in the book is that humanoids like orcs are actually the reincarnated souls of those PC races that have been evil. Living as a humanoid is a way for them to learn from their mistake in a prior life and thus come closer to redemption in their next incarnation.

So, how does this affect the whole humanoids are evil arguement?

Quote from: John Morrow;478564And sexy romantic Good vampires to fall in love with.  Oh wait...

Well, at some points this thread does bring to mind those comments in the recent torture thread about all vampires and werewolves being objectively evil and thus fit only to be hunted down, regardless of the setting.

Quote from: jeff37923;478613humanoids like orcs are actually the reincarnated souls of those PC races that have been evil. Living as a humanoid is a way for them to learn from their mistake in a prior life and thus come closer to redemption in their next incarnation.

By killing orcs, we offer them the chance to go to their reward and be reincarnated as a more worthy species. Same with cockroaches.

We're doing them a favour, really.